Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391 (Middle Ages) - Softcover

Tartakoff, Paola

 
9781512825459: Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391 (Middle Ages)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 151282545X ISBN 13: 9781512825459
Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Between Christian and Jew pivots around the inquisitorial trial of three Jews who were accused in 1341 of persuading Jewish apostates to return to Judaism and die as martyrs. This cultural history explores the worlds of Jews, Jewish converts, and medieval inquisitors as they intersected in northern Iberia in the Crown of Aragon.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Paola Tartakoff is Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and author of Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Introduction

Writing about Muslim converts to Christianity in thirteenth-century Valencia, the great historian of the medieval Mediterranean, Robert I. Burns, noted that converts were "a by-product of the main dispute, a kind of displaced person, whose story and status illumine the larger scene." The same could be said of Jewish converts to Christianity who lived in the Crown of Aragon during the century that preceded the massacres and forced conversions of 1391. Their lives lay bare the intensity of mutual hostility between Christians and Jews across a period whose first decades in particular have been celebrated as a time of interreligious harmony.

In the medieval Crown of Aragon, the situation of Jewish converts was, in some ways, paradoxical. Christians were enamored of the idea of winning over Jewish souls, and some Jews were eager to bring apostates back to Judaism. Yet many Christians were disdainful of actual Jewish converts, both on account of converts' dubious motivations in seeking baptism and also because of converts' ties—real and merely perceived—to Judaism, and most Jews repudiated apostates as traitors and sinners who had been polluted by baptism and life among Christians. Sometimes courted by Christians and Jews, yet usually ultimately rejected by both societies, many converts became wandering beggars, some made a living by tormenting Jews, and others took great risks to return to Judaism.

The present work explores these dynamics with special attention to the activities of medieval, or papal, inquisitors, the forerunners of the personnel of the notorious Spanish Inquisition, which was established in 1478. In so doing, it argues that, decades before Jewish conversion became a mass phenomenon in Iberia, and over a century before Jewish converts were inquisitors' primary targets, Jewish converts were a focus of tensions between Christians and Jews. Their experiences thus reflect and shed light on deep undercurrents of mutual antagonism.

The Case of Pere

The story of a convert from the Aragonese town of Calatayud whose Jewish name was Alatzar (Eleazar) forms the backbone of this book. Alatzar was the son of a Jew named Isaach Camariel, and he seems to have been of humble origins. He and his father frequently dined at the home of a Jewish cobbler, and he once worked as a messenger for a wealthy Jewish family. In mid-December 1340, Alatzar was baptized, hundreds of kilometers from home, in the Catalan town of Sant Pere de Riudebitlles, taking the name Pere (Peter). We do not know how old he was or why he decided to convert.

Pere might never have appeared in written records had it not been for a dramatic turn of events. On January 5, 1341, less than three weeks after his baptism, he returned to Calatayud and narrowly escaped death at the stake. Flames were lapping at his feet, in fact, when the local Dominican prior and the commissary of the bishop of Tarazona—having heard that a Jewish convert was being burned—rushed to the scene, ordered that he be freed from the fire, and had him brought to the Dominican monastery of Calatayud, Sant Pere Mártir. There, Pere told a hastily assembled inquisitorial tribunal that a group of Jews had convinced him to court death at the stake. These Jews had done so, Pere explained, by telling him that in order to save his soul he would have to renounce Christianity before the local justicia—the magistrate in charge of administering justice—thereby incur the death penalty and die as a Jewish martyr. Pere added that the Jews also told him that they previously had convinced a convert whose Jewish name was Abadia (Obadiah) to do this. Abadia had burned to death, and his soul was now "safe with God." According to the inquisitorial scribe and notary who was present at Pere's interrogation, the Christian townspeople of Calatayud confirmed that seven years earlier Abadia had "had himself burned because he had gone over to the Catholic faith."

Pere's accusations were corroborated in detail by two Jewish eyewitnesses, and they sparked a series of trials that unfolded over the course of twenty months, passed through the hands of inquisitors in Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia, came to the attention of King Pere III, and concluded in Barcelona under the supervision of fra Bernat de Puigcercós, the inquisitor of all the territories of the Crown of Aragon. Pere was sentenced to prison for life, and so were two of the Jews whom Pere blamed for his actions—the prominent Janto (Shem Tov) Almuli of La Almunia de Doña Godina and his wife, Jamila. A third Jew—the illustrious Jucef de Quatorze of Calatayud—was turned over to the secular arm to burn at the stake.

Pere's case is extraordinary in several respects. First, Jews and converts were uncommon defendants for medieval inquisitions, which began to operate in the 1230s in order to eradicate Christian heresies, such as Catharism. Moreover, Jews were technically off limits to medieval inquisitions as, unlike converts, they did not belong to the Christian fold. Indeed, the records of the trials of Janto and Jamila Almuli and Jucef de Quatorze not only include some of the earliest known inquisitorial trial transcripts of any kind from the Crown of Aragon, but they are especially unusual as complete records of inquisitorial proceedings against Jews. As such, they raise broad questions about the relationships between medieval inquisitors, converts, and Jews. How commonly did medieval inquisitors prosecute Jews and converts? With what offenses were Jews and converts usually charged? How did these trials unfold? What impact did inquisitorial prosecution have on Jews and converts? How did the prosecution of Jews and converts affect inquisitors and Christian society?

Historians have begun to explore these questions in general terms. The dossiers of the Almulis and Jucef de Quatorze grant unprecedented insight, however, into daily interactions between Jews, converts, and inquisitors. They allow us to trace the arc of a complex case in detail, and they preserve the unedited ruminations of a medieval inquisitor on the prosecution of Jews. Moreover, in conjunction with additional sources—including royal, papal, and episcopal records and inquisitorial manuals—they illuminate how the inquisitorial prosecution of Jews was intended to punish Jews for perceived attacks against Christians and the Christian faith, and they demonstrate the symbolic importance of Jewish conversions for the medieval church.

Pere's case is remarkable also insofar as it highlights the existence of Jewish converts to Christianity in Iberia prior to 1391. With the exception of occasional victims of Christian violence and several converts who became prominent anti-Jewish polemicists—such as Peter Alfonsi (formerly Moses Sefaradi), Pablo Christiani (formerly Saul of Montpellier), and Alfonso of Valladolid (formerly Abner of Burgos)—Iberian Jewish converts who lived before 1391 have lurked below the scholarly radar. Pere and Abadia were not alone, however, in journeying from Judaism to Christianity when they did. Nearly two hundred Jewish converts emerge from the pages of royal, papal, and episcopal correspondence, inquisitorial records, and rabbinic responsa composed between 1243 and 1391. Moreover, additional converts undoubtedly have been lost to history. Baptismal records were not yet systematically kept during this period. Episcopal documents of the kind that most frequently mention converts were not produced until the first quarter of the fourteenth century, at the earliest. Finally, wars, natural disasters, and poor storage conditions have destroyed enormous quantities of archival material.

Although fragmentary, extant sources establish that Jewish converts constituted a significant presence in Jewish and Christian communal life in the...

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Verlag
University of Pennsylvania Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
151282545X
ISBN 13 
9781512825459
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Mare Nostrum Group B.V.
gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk

Doelen 72
Breda
4831 GR
Niederlande

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